Office Web Apps Versus Google Docs: Does Either Shine?

A number of people have asked me what I think of Office Web Apps and how it compares with Google Docs. In some respects, the real question is whether the glass is half full or half empty.

A number of people have asked me what I think of Office Web Apps and how it compares with Google Docs. In some respects, the real question is whether the glass is half full or half empty.

Both of these online application suites, and other tools such as Zoho or Glide, work well enough for basic work and provide a convenient way of sharing data so you can collaborate with someone in another location. But I find both to have notable limitations. A switch to either as a primary tool would be a big step backward for me. Of course, I'm a "power user" of office applications, and that does skew my perspective.

You'll find some examples of typical jobs in each suite--and my evaluation of them--after the jump. (Just click to enlarge each of the embedded documents.)

Let's start with word processing. Microsoft has made a big deal about the "veracity" of file formats--you can start with a document created in Word in Microsoft Office on the desktop, upload it to Skydrive, share and edit it there, then save it back to your local machine--and end up with the formatting looking just right. That is a good step forward, and in general, it has worked quite well for me, better than with the other services.

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. Here is a document in Word:

It's easy enough to upload it to Skydrive, from directly in Word. If you want to look at it from Skydrive, you'll see a list of files. If you just click on the name of the file, the document which renders in a reading mode, using the Silverlight plug-in, looks perfect:

However, that mode doesn't let you edit the file. To do that you, can click a button that lets you open it in Word (which would be fine); or more to the point, edit it in the browser:

And that's where the pros and cons come in. You'll notice that the browser version has a number of strengths, such as the way it picks up and correctly handles styles from Word, and picks up a larger selection of fonts. On the other hand, pictures just appear in the text without any positioning or word wrap, and there are essentially no tools for editing them. Even drop caps appear on a separate line. You can edit the text and the formatting comes back together, but it's far from ideal.

Contrast this with the same document uploaded to Google Docs:

Here, you get a version that looks much more like the original, and it's in a form where you can edit it. You can adjust the size or move pictures around. But Google Docs doesn't do nearly as good of a job with fonts, spacing, or accurately representing the styles (though it does pick them up.)

In both cases, the spelling check seems a bit old-fashioned. And given that the point of online tools is collaboration, I'm disappointed that neither has real markup or review tools (though Google Docs does have a revision history). In fact, if you try to open a Word document with revision marks in the Word Web App, it just won't do it. You'll have to save it separately and remove those features.

In some respects, Excel is the standout in the Office Web Apps suite, as it lets two people edit the same sheet simultaneously. It also has a number of advanced features, such as letting you update connections and data and see parts of pivot tables.

Here I took a lightly formatted Excel spreadsheet:

I uploaded it onto Skydrive and edited in a browser:

It looked quite good, with all the basic features, including a lot of cell highlighting and graphics.

Then I tried uploading it to Google Docs:

The basic spreadsheet data and formulas came through fine, as did a lot of the formatting. But the chart was missing, though I could have recreated it.

It was on more complicated spreadsheets that the issues really began. The Excel Web Apps did a better job of displaying graphics (though still with only limited features); it lets you look at spreadsheet data as if it were a data table and even supports filtering your spreadsheets through pivot tables (though only if you created the pivot table in the desktop version).

Still, it has some notable limits. Charting and image editing not as rich as it is in the desktop version. Several of my spreadsheets are bigger than the 25MB-per-document limit for editing. I often saw messages saying it can't open files with "comments, shapes or other objects," and in those cases, I had to open files in the reading mode, then "save a copy" and edit from there. Nor does it support links to external workbooks, let you create pivot tables, or support Visual Basic for Applications scripts.

Spreadsheets in Google Docs are more advanced in some ways, in that the product does offer a scripting language and an interesting array of scripts from others you can run via the Script Gallery, including some that offer improved formatting or special functions. But you are limited to converting 1MB spreadsheets, and it doesn't support features such as pivot tables. Also, when importing Excel spreadsheets, I ran into a number of places where formatting didn't look right, and in several cases I encountered unexplained and very cryptic bugs trying to upload complex spreadsheets.

In general, I'd probably say Google Spreadsheets may be the more capable product on its own but that the Excel Web App is a better companion and produces better-looking spreadsheets. Then again, Microsoft doesn't want the Web Apps to be a replacement for Office; just a adjunct. It is fine for simple spreadsheets, but for more complex ones, you're best off using it for just viewing data or for when you create a model in the desktop version and just expect online users to plug in numbers.

And that's the best of the current suite of online apps. The PowerPoint Web App is much weaker, with no way to add or edit transitions and only minimal picture-editing features. Google Docs' presentation features seem to offer slightly more graphics tools, but it won't let you convert presentations that are bigger than 10MB, it doesn't work with current PowerPoint formats, it has more limited font support, and also, it lacks transitions.

My guess is that despite the emphasis on Web Apps, more people are likely to actually use SkyDrive as a way of sharing documents they'll edit in local versions of Office. Of course, there are plenty of other services that let you share files, but Microsoft does have the advantage of being able to integrate this directly within Office 2010 itself. (Again, you could do the same thing with Google Docs, although it offers less storage for free.)

I might also note that Microsoft still has a way to go in simplifying the branding and naming conventions of these products. Some of this is a short-term concern, as Microsoft has again renamed and reconfigured a number of products: For instance, the old Office Live Workspace is now Windows Live SkyDrive. And the older FolderShare and Live Mesh products are now being folded into Windows Live Sync (with some new features, but some old features missing).

But the naming and conventions of SkyDrive and Sync are confusing; and those two and Office Web Apps all have different limits on the sizes of files and folders supported. (As near as I can tell, you can upload a 50MB file to SkyDrive, but you can't open one larger than 25MB; and while SkyDrive has 25GB of storage, you can sync only 2GB of it. These are reasonable limits on a free product, but the differences are confusing.) And note that Office.Live.Com is now the home for the Office Web Apps, but Officelive.com (note the one missing dot) is the home for a small-business Web hosting product. I follow this stuff for a living, and even I'm confused.

In short, what works, works pretty well. What doesn't work... doesn't. And that seems to be the case with all of the online applications. I supposed that's probably to be expected at this stage of the evolution of online apps, but the hype had me hoping for more. For now, these tools are fine if you are looking for basic functionality. For serious users, though, they just aren't replacements for desktop apps

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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